Academics Worldwide Against the Vilification of Nivedita Menon

[Expressions of support from scholars wanting to sign on are continuing to pour in. We will therefore be continuously adding the names as they come in and keep updating the statement. – AN]

VICIOUS CAMPAIGN AGAINST FEMINIST SCHOLAR

We, the undersigned, wish to express our shock and indignation at the vicious right wing media campaign conducted over the past few days against well-known feminist scholar and Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Nivedita Menon. This media campaign mischievously decontextualizes her lecture at the public teach-in programme in JNU with the use of selective clips and inflammatory commentary. The television channel Zee has led the main campaign by branding Professor Menon as ‘anti-national’ and instigating viewers to take action. Such branding is tantamount to a television channel acting as both judge and jury, and directly placing an individual’s rights and safety under threat.

The use of television media to attack intellectuals and instigate vigilante action is a feature of authoritarian regimes worldwide. Similar tendencies are visible in recent months in India. Singling out individuals and creating a mass-frenzy against them by using the medium of TV is a dangerous trend that directly incites and encourages violence. This is a deep disregard for any process of law. We saw Zee TV do this earlier when doctored videos became the basis of arrest and harassment of JNU students. In this case, Twitter and social media campaigns have followed attacks on Professor Menon, demanding the framing of sedition charges against her and wielding open threats of rape. Most disturbingly, there are media reports of police complaints filed by interested parties demanding ‘action’ against Professor Menon.

Professor Menon is a renowned scholar and feminist thinker; her texts are used in university syllabi worldwide. As a prominent scholar and activist she has intervened in academic and public debates for decades. Professor Menon has also been known as an inspiring teacher for thirty years, guiding generations of students who now work in India and abroad. She has never shied away from intellectual debate in academic and public forums, passionately intervening in debates on feminism and social theory. This is the first time that her own freedom to articulate her ideas has been so viciously attacked in an orchestrated media campaign.

The freedom to articulate ideas is the basis of a university. When opinions voiced in a public lecture by an academic are made part of a selective media campaign that seeks not to debate but simply to malign, both democracy and the university are under threat. What is under question are not just Professor Menon’s ideas but also the very freedom for academics and citizens. We condemn this media campaign and associated threats, urging all academics and intellectuals to stand with Professor Menon at this time.

We call on the Vice Chancellor of JNU to swiftly defend Professor Menon from such attacks and protect the sanctity of university debate. We urge the JNU administration to stand by its faculty’s right to hold individual opinions and condemn all efforts to diminish this. We call on the university to immediately ensure that freedoms that form its very academic basis are not eroded in this moment. We call further for every censure and action against the unlawful actions of the television channels in question. Finally, we urge all well wishers of a democratic India to stand by Professor Menon for their own freedoms, and not just hers.

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15 thoughts on “Academics Worldwide Against the Vilification of Nivedita Menon”

Sucharita Sarkar

Having read Prof. Menon’s eye-opening book “Seeing Like a Feminist”,and having admired the intellectual rigour and honesty she brings to her research and her teaching, I too support her wholeheartedly and condemn Zee News, its petty-minded, lying anchor Sudhir Choudhary, and the political forces that prop up such bigoted media houses.

A very impressive list of supporters of the freedom of speech of Ms Nivedia Menon. Some of them I have known personally. I earnestly support her freedom, but also that of others who do not conquer with her opinions and methods. Democracy must not be limited to a few self styled intellectuals, scholars and privileged individuals, but to all citizens. Having said that, the list is drawn very heavily from non-Indian Universities, including the US. I myself have been on the faculty of a prestigious private University in the US. The kind of student activity that has surfaced recently at JNU, and the active involvement of a section of faculty, has been unimaginable in my own or any other US University during my four decades of service. I wonder if any of the US Professors in your list, or their students, can exercise their freedom of speech as happening in JNU. Should we then assume that they have no democratic freedom of speech or they wish to define that term very differently in Indian context. Kafila is good example where dissenting voices are suppressed, even when are made in a polite and respectful manner.

That is not true. Kafila never turns down a comment that uses reasonably polite language and makes a relevant point, dissenting or otherwise. But we do discourage right wing abuse, personal attacks, and repetitive or completely irrelevant comments. Of course, we exercise or judgment when we decide. Also, there are members who allow all sorts of comments on their respective posts too, so even this is not a strictly enforced general policy.

RamDarshanSharma
1. In what way has the freedom of speech of those who do not agree with Nivedita Menon been curbed by her, by JNU, in cyberspace or by the state?
2. This particular statement is from academics both based in India and from outside India (including Bangladesh, South Africa and Uganda apart from the US) – 70 of 154 signatories are based in India – roughly half. Yet you see it as “heavily” drawn from outside India, implying some lack of legitimacy? In addition, there are several other statements from people based in India, in support of democratic freedoms and of Nivedita Menon, on several other portals, including on Facebook, we suggest you do a simple search. Those are all from people based here, in India, who are opposed to these fascist incursions into our democracy.
3. What exactly is “the kind of student activity” that has “surfaced” in JNU that you find so “unimaginable”? Allegations of particular slogans raised and so on have been proved to have been based on doctored tapes. There is even an indication that the entire clampdown was planned and orchestrated from Nagpur, RSS Headquarters, with IB involvement. There have been articles on this in Kafila as well as elsewhere. Be that as it may, are you claiming that it is unimaginable to oppose capital punishment or to criticize the Indian state or judiciary? That was what the event was doing.
Or is it unimaginable to discuss openly the histories of nation-states, showing how different parts of what looks like a natural formation (“India”, or “USA” or “France”) came to be incorporated, either willingly or unwillingly, into particular nation-states?
Is it “unimaginable” to do archival research that would show how Manipur was incorporated, or Kashmir, or Nagaland?
4. You wonder “if any of the US Professors in your list, or their students, can exercise their freedom of speech as happening in JNU”.
The “US Professors” on this list (and indeed every person on this list), has opposed sectarian politics, imperialism and racism in their own contexts, some at great risk to themselves. so please dont make facile and ignorant assumptions.
5. As for Kafila, we do moderate comments, we say so explicitly. We are one of the few forums on-line where opinions and views contrary to the massive right-wing presence in cyberspace and other mainstream media, are expressed. We see no reason why those views should take over our little part of cyberspace, with their insinuations, accusations and allegations, however “politely expressed”.
We do not call out state machinery on those whose views are majoritarian and right-wing, we do not abuse them or threaten them with violence, we do not try to silence them, we simply don’t give them space on our website.
On Kafila we want to give space to the wide spectrum of voices and debates within what is termed “dissent”, not to reproduce the polarized “right-left” high decibel shouting that passes for debate in mainstream media.

Your comment, am sorry sir, is a clear pointer of the fact that, education alone will not help one to look at things around in a rational way. The backgrounds in which one has been brought up would keep on appearing in various ways irrespective of the education. What a pity.

Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu may feel that no American university would allow students to commemorate Osama bin Laden on campus the way Afzal Guru’s death was marked in JNU, but Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber begs to differ. “We would and should tolerate that. It would be very disruptive. People would be very angry about the statement. But we would not discipline somebody for making statements of that nature,” Eisgruber told The Indian Express.

@ Sunalini Kumar, I thought the #JNU intellectuals do not believe in conspiracy theories. Is this planned and orchestrated from Nagpur, RSS Headquarters, with IB involvement: >>> : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWmhhvJjQ1Y who is heckling Prof Makarand Paranjape?

I taught in half a dozon of universities and lectured more than 100 univs spread over three continents. I never saw a place where students occupying administrative premises and sloganeering. What culture and education is this? No wonder they want desh ki barbadi – Gobardhan Das, Professor at JNU on Twitter

Reprehensible sloganeering, calling for India’s destruction, effigy-burning, vandalising the buildings, has NO place in a centre of learning – Anand Ranganathan ‏@ARangarajan1972 on Twitter

@Avinashk1975 , I do not even know where to begin.
1. As for Prof paranjape’s speech , if you had cared to actually see through it entirely, you would also have noticed him thanking the audience for the civility with which they heard his lecture. The little heckling that happened during Q and A in face of the outright povocation in his comments is part of any engagement that happens when you choose to take contrary stands . I am amazed that this is thought of as harassment when we see the everyday sheer hostility, open threats, violence, intimidation , witch hunting misuse of state machinery and partisan political interference that JNu students and teachers have faced over the ppast few weeks . And i can gaurantee you, if a left leaning person had dared to take on the right in any of the several right wing bastions of hooligan ABVP politics in so many universities we’ve been to, i wonder if he would still be in one piece. Shall i link you to the several incidents of outright hooliganism and obstruction and cancellations under pressure of anyone who does not agree with their politics have happened across the country ? Shall i mention the several people who’ve been beaten up, harassed , hounded, police complaints and administrative complaints filed against them?
2. I may have been to lesser number of universities than you but i cannot remember a single university with an active students’s movement where students do not occupy open spaces near centres of authority , especially administrative blocks, and if necessary gherao them ! Here in India, in US, in UK, in the middle east, in south africa, in latin america !! And sloganeering is an integral part of any protest anywhere – it distills and translates the essence and objectives of any protest in a manner which makes it possibel for them to be understood by a much wider audience in a simple and direct manner . Really, sloganeering is the most standard form of protest anywhere , unless we decide that protest and resistance itself is wrong irrespective of what the issues at stake are !
3″.Reprehensible sloganeering, calling for India’s destruction, effigy-burning, vandalising the buildings, has NO place in a centre of learning “. Really, Where exactly did you see JNU students doing any of this beyond doctored videos ? Where was the vandalising ? Has it it been proved that any jnu student was responsible for what could be reprehensible sloganeering or kangaroo cours and media trials are an order of teh day for everyone?
4. As for conspiracies , we needed to experience them to believe them, you need not despite all the evidence and questions that are coming up, but maybe then you can also not jump into teh bandwagon and believe what the other side is saying too unless things are proven ? I wonder why those doing the actual sloganeering you find reprehensible are still at large by the police’s own admission , while other students are in jail . Not to speak of goon lawyers , anti social elements , bjp mla’s and Mp’s who are making one outrageous statement after another threatening to kill, rape, murder openly being allowed to roam about freely and with impunity.
Nothing can be done about such blatant partisanship and one sidedness in face of all that has happened and continues to happen.

Prof. Menon has our full support as far as her freedom of expression is concerned. However, what she is asserting needs to be dispassionately evaluated and critiqued. Her assertions on J&K are completely wrong and are bereft of any factual backing. One does expect to see same level of academic rigor behind her public pronouncements that hopefully she brings to her lectures at JNU.
Here is a point of view that I hope signatories of this letter take few minutes to read and reflect.http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Tic-Tac-Toe/occupation-academia/

Avinash, do think clearly, please. How does someone “heckling” Prof Paranjpe at his lecture disprove the possibility that the attack on JNU was planned for a long time, as editorials in Organizer and Panchjanya attest? If you have the time and/or the inclination to read, take a look at Pramod Ranjan here, showing an uncanny similarity between the Panchjanya editorial of a few months before February 9th, and the Delhi Police report on the event after it happened.This post details the reasons it seems plausible that the “slogan shouting students” were known to the Delhi Police and IB.
As for the tweets you post here, it seems they are talking about the ABVP and its tactics, No effigy burning or vanadalising of buildings has taken place except by the ABVP, and that too, not on JNU campus which has a remarkable record of no physical violence on campus.

Rajesh Razdan,
Yes, Aarti Tikoo Singh’s blog post has had a lot of traction in this whole business. A substantive response from me to the debate on Kashmir will have to wait, but for the moment, let me state that:
a) Singh’s account that goes over the well known Indian statist account of Kashmir, which is comfortable for many, is merely one version. Her “facts” can be countered by decades of “other facts” arising from scholarship and research by many others. The point here is that we are not confronting “facts” with “non-facts”, but confronting differing notions of nationhood with one another, and figuring out what it would mean to take democracy seriously. In that sense, I prefer the kind of honest argument that says “I dont care about the history of nation-formation, but India should not be dismembered”. At least we know what we are disagreeing on, then, whether the term dismemberment accurately reflects what might happen, etc.
b) What becomes evident from these kind of interventions claiming I am lying, distorting, or am simply more ignorant than any person who can write a competent term paper on India’s official position on Kashmir, is that Kashmir is a disputed and controversial issue, that is simply not debated in mainstream, educated India. The debate is now happening, not in marginal circles, but in the heart of the mainstream – surely that is the purpose of intellectual activity?Saurabh Sharma of ABVP said in a recent interview, very honestly:
“Go back to text books. I have never read in any school book that Kashmir is not an integral part of the country.”
On being asked in response by the interviewer whether one might learn more in college than one knew in school, his frank response is:
“I would have never got full marks if I had written in my exams that Kashmir was not an integral part of India.” Now, Saurabh is a research scholar in neuroscience, his last social science text-book would have been read in Class 10, at the age of 15, and of course he would have got not just “not full marks”, but a zero if he had written anything else in his exam.
We might want to ask – why is that sort of education considered “neutral”, while opening up arbitrarily settled matters for debate and discussion becomes “propaganda”? It may be true for the sciences that some matters are beyond debate, but surely not for politics, history, and social sciences in general.
c) The signatories to this letter are not taking a stand on the substantive arguments at stake, but on the ways in which debate, democratic rights and the right to dissent are being attempted to be stifled through non-state mechanisms (privately owned media with a clear agenda, for example) inciting mob violence, and by the invocation of coercive apparatus of the state by private individuals against those whose opinions with which they disagree.